From Wicca to Christ w/ Vesper Stamper (Shocking Content Warning)

yeah this is you're Live Matt I'm live in case you want something oh I was gonna bring mine who are you funny my the my thing that frustrates me about those is how they all twist around on me on themselves I have like a half size one okay and it's just right have you ever seen a little stroker no come on that's what the old Russian Orthodox use this looks serious this looks like for like really really it looks serious and like licorice it does I should show my husband he's like a big black licorice fan oh we do um no mine I also like maybe this is not holy but I cut off the The Fringe part because it's just annoying I have not used that to wipe my teeth I'm not no I'm not gonna start now listen every time I go up to venerate the icon when I get to church this is my prayer Lord you know I'm never gonna get this right right like you know I'm never gonna do it right so I just kind of have a little chuckle with the Lord and he understands and I proceed beautiful well thanks for coming on the show I met you because you were part of my locals community and I don't I I kind of I mean I know your story a little bit but I I forget what led to this I know that we were chatting and I was really inspired by what we were chatting about that you'd become an Orthodox Christian last year um so I'm looking forward to yeah yeah and I found out about you and Pints with Aquinas because a friend of mine who's also Australian um sent me uh your your interview with sister Miriam James and I you know that woman that woman oh my gosh she's a ninja I just felt like seen yeah yeah she's the kind of woman that when she looks at you you feel like the rest of the world Fades away and somehow you're still existing in it yeah she's a good woman yeah I've been praying um on the Halo app yeah so a little plug yeah um hello.com three months for free sign up there not on Laura horns page on my page but I've been doing the uh Mary untire of knots and the Sacred Heart as well it's been good that's beautiful um so when you became Orthodox were you Discerning between Catholicism and or Orthodoxy is that why your friend sent it or no I think she just sent it because it's such a Miriam's story is amazing so you know it's funny there is um just like in the Catholic Community online there's a lot of louder not there's anything wrong with being traditional but tradia people you know I think like in Orthodoxy you have those as well there are people who are like really off-putting to me oh really but say things very solidly and firmly and sure sure but it's been beautiful for me to encounter Orthodox Christians who like actually see me as a brother and don't feel the need to differentiate themselves from either way new zealanders do oh yeah you know I can only imagine yeah yeah so it's cool that using the Hello app yeah yeah I like it I've been doing the Bible in a year with father Mike yeah yeah going all the way good stuff well where do you want to start I I mean I know we have a lot to talk about but I kind of want to get into your story yeah before we if that's okay sure I mean I can start at the very beginning all right it's a very good place to start um so which kind of has some relevance to the story overall uh I was born in Germany on an army base my father was in the Army I never met him and I was born in West Germany during the height of the Cold War so that kind of figures into later work that I would be doing interestingly and I even though we left Germany as when I was a baby I still feel a real connection to it like I don't really feel American I feel much more European I mean I we came back to New York and I feel like a New Yorker but I kind of feel everywhere in nowhere you know so anyway um the reason we left Germany was because my father was not a good person he um he was abusive to my mother and when I was a baby she was worried that he was going to hurt me and so um she fled with me and really saved my life you know um it was it was for the best you know I didn't grow up with a father um did you grew up in New York City I did in Staten Island New York until high school and then the upper west side so I want to just throw out a disclaimer right now that there's going to be some things we talk about yeah that will be triggering to people sure so just out of love if you're watching right now we're going to be getting into some issues and if you have children this is yeah don't let them watch this probably not yeah at least watch it before before you make that judgment but sorry yeah sure so we came back and moved in with my grandparents lived with my grandparents until I was in fourth or fifth grade and my mom remarried when I was four she married a Jewish man and she converted to Judaism so I was ostensibly raised in a in a Jewish Home not ostensibly I was raised in a Jewish Home went to Hebrew school went to Temple Israel on Staten Island and um at the time it was not nothing in my home was comfortable let's say um it was it was a very fraught childhood I actually remember very little of it and unfortunately in my in my extended family there was well in my immediate family and my extended family there's a lot of abuse um there was we had a uh we had a family member who um I'll put the how do I put this delicately he he made his way through every female in my family uh including me and so uh if you can imagine my my mom has just endured this horrible you know abuse at the hands of another yet another man comes back with me to try to start a new life and then uh when I was three we were having dinner and I just made some comment at the dinner table because this person was present at dinner and um I said oh do you remember when you did did that and it was like a record scratch you know and everybody realized that he had gotten to me too so the good part about that is that it stopped how did everybody react to the dinner table I don't know I don't remember that my mom actually only told me this when I was 16. um I had and I was so glad she did I didn't remember the abuse for a long long time and when she told me it answered so many questions for me about things like why I didn't feel at home in my body why I felt so confused when I would look at boys or girls and didn't know what was going on you know I had no guidance no no parenting in that area at all um so it made a lot of things make sense it's better to know I suppose yeah yeah forgive me if I ask any insensitive questions no it's I'm an open bucket um do you remember the abuse yeah yeah hey uh I'm gonna change the title just a warning on it sure oh thanks yeah yeah I've heard and I was listening to a podcast today that talked about how when we don't process or heal from childhood wounds they come back yeah in like physical ailments and all sorts of things yeah yeah that's certainly true in my case um I've had chronic illness since I was you know a kid have you yeah yeah yeah I had uh I had a chronic pain disorder for 20 years um that's another story we'll get you know we'll get to that later but uh yeah in this in this immediate kind of situation um you know the other element of this was that my my mom had mental illness that was undiagnosed until I was an adult and so um the immediate home life was was total chaos I really never knew what was real and what wasn't uh every time I thought I could hang my hat on something and and kind of go in a certain direction um it would just I I would be derailed you know or I would say something that I thought maybe would um make my mom proud or like make her my friend or you know make her my ally or something like that and it would be met with like the complete opposite or you know um yeah it's very very difficult there's an unpredictable very unpredictable so the the subject of reality is really really important to me you know I'm not going to call things something that they're not so I and I I do want to preface this too by just saying I honor my mother I started out by saying that she saved my life and she set my life on a course that had it had she chosen to stay now I'm not making a theological statement here or anything like that but had she chosen to stay and endure um being beaten you know for the sake of you know family togetherness or something um my life would be completely different I I don't think I would be a functioning person so I I honor my mother completely and my mother is now um she's taken care of she's stable she's happy um there's been so much healing there so I anything that I say about my upbringing just I I want people to know that that's been healed you know and there's still of course there's going to be things that like the onion layers you know it's gonna be unpacked over a lifetime how do we honor our parents while acknowledging the harm they did yeah I mean for me I think it's you know my stepdad always used to say uh you know we did the best we could I did the best I could and as a young person I would feel like I was nowhere near good enough how can you even say that to me you know and I would be very judgmental angry but I think as you get older you recognize that the adults in your life had their own limitations just like you know you have your own limitations yeah and so I really do know that she did the best she could you know she just had fewer resources to do it with you know okay yeah so living in this Jewish Home yeah were you ever like did you believe in God as a child I I think I did I didn't really have a lot of thoughts about God but I I did know that there was something bigger if I can I don't think I could have articulated it but I was a rabid consumer of fairy tales and the fairy tales were really like where I saw the real world happening and I felt like I was living in one first of all you know because you always have this Trope of like the simpleton you know like the least the smallest the least qualified the the one who's always screwing up right and that felt like me I felt like that all the time and it's always that person that's the hero of the story in some strange way and they they grow and you know there's the usual things that are said about fairy tales and why they're structured the way they are but I think say it again oh yeah because they've been said same again no I I think that I'm so you had Nicholas cotar yeah on your show and uh he and I were having a conversation and he asked me this question what is it about fairy tales that you is it the moral and I said no because some of them are like you don't even know what the moral is you know but for me it was always this theme of this the simpleton let's say being the gift being given the gift of insight and being able to see things that other people didn't see and that felt like my story like I felt like I could see things going on that the people around me didn't see or didn't want to see so for example you know I was largely raised by my grandparents and I would try to tell them what was going on at home and they didn't believe me and my grandparents were sainted people I mean they were amazing and yet so much went on under their roof that they never acknowledged and when I would tell them this happened or this is going on they would say oh but they really love you oh but they're really doing the best they can oh as if like as the child I needed to be the one to extend Grace yeah to the to the grown-ups you know and I was even I was told that you know again and again so you know not being believed when you're trying to tell what's really going on with your story it's really it's hard I was reading fairy tales to my kids the other night I love fairy tales and I love how children are far more entertained by fairy tales than anything else yeah I just love the uh something about the chaos that the person the the protagonist walks into like something that's you know like dig up that tree and you will find a golden chicken or something like that so it's something about that too I think that we find ourselves thrust into life with things we do not understand and do not know how to process yeah yeah and you know yeah you get one of those hints like so the Golden Goose is the fairy tale that you're referencing yeah which I've actually I Illustrated in one college it's one of my favorites but yeah you know you get this kind of uh clue okay go over there to that tree chop it down you're gonna find something awesome and you're like why what you don't know why you're led to do something but then all of a sudden in hindsight you realize oh my gosh I couldn't have gotten from A to B without that instigation yeah that catalyst okay so you went to Jewish school and but no kind of direct kind of communication with God we taught your prayers how does it work growing up as a Jew so we were a very secular household we were like New York City liberal Democrat households you know um it was really much more about like Temple life and the culture there and um my stepdad's pride in being Jewish and I have two two half siblings who are his and my mom's kids um and so you know they are like fully fully Jewish you know had Barn pot Mitzvah um so this was like culturally the atmosphere in my home but because of all the other stuff going on I don't know it didn't at the time it didn't really take but it was it was part of me you know it's definitely part of me so when I was 16 is when I when I met the Lord and that's a whole other you know we can get there but it wasn't until after I became a Christian that I realized what had been implanted in me in my Jewish upbringing so now looking back at it I I feel like I was given a treasure house because I see things there it is in the gospels you see things that others can't or don't because I didn't have that upbringing I didn't even think of it in that regard but yeah you know sometimes it you know I'll say something about you know the Jewish connection to the gospels or something and it'll people would be like what just go right over their heads you know but it's for me I I feel like I won the lottery you know it's such a rich it's such a rich thing that was kind of tilled into the soil of my life I'm grateful for it all right so how how do we get from there to there how do we get from Child Vespa to Christ yeah okay so I started going to church with my grandparents when I was nine and so I was actually uh had first communion and confirmed in the Episcopal church and your parents were okay with that your stepdad and Mum they didn't care that much I mean I often say I was raised by wolves there was just so much that I did that I was a latchkey kid okay you know they're um I don't really remember my mom and my stepdad in my childhood memories okay just I have a couple of memories it's pretty blank yeah my mom was a nurse practitioner she worked all the time my stepdad worked in New York at a bank I was alone most of the time so my grandparents were still a very safe place for me to be so they would come and pick me up bring me to church you know and so in middle school when I sort of still had some childlike innocence you know I I went with them and I felt very very safe right up in the front of the church like right up you know I wanted to be as close as possible to them in the choir and then like to The Altar and I would even have like the desire to like crawl under the Altar and just hide there you know I just wanted to to be there you know so there was something very attractive to me about it but at the same time How deep did it go I don't know so I um around that time too I discovered that I was an artist I'd been drawing my whole life but I didn't realize that that was like an option you know and the fairy tales it was like oh I want to draw fairy tales like for the rest of my life so I found out about this Arts High School in Manhattan called LaGuardia high school and I applied I got in and I all of a sudden was commuting an hour and a half a day what age at 13. okay yeah to Art School in New York wow yeah in 90s New York by the way which was like way cooler a dream it I teach there now not at LaGuardia but I teach in the city once a week and it's like uh you know to gird my loins to go back yeah it's not the same yeah it's not the same but anyway we have a link to vespa's Instagram page and her art in the description below I put it there yesterday Thursday so please go check it out because she's actually like shockingly good no like that's really good but like holy crap oh thank you thanks well there was no plan B for me so yeah so I started going to this High School in New York did your mom care that you had got accepted to this that you were going to this was she proud of you was it a i put up any resistance or she didn't put up any resistance again like I hardly saw her and when I did it was so bad um I tried to be home as little as possible to be honest with you I did a lot of theater in high school just so that I didn't have to go home um so yeah I don't really know I don't really know I know when I was applying to college she had some different ideas for me like she thought um the two of the ideas she pitched to me were um airplane pilot and dental hygienist oh you're like no it's like I'm a White Knuckle flyer why are those two of us those are very like extreme maybe an astronaut or maybe stability I don't know job security yeah I don't know not artists you had to become an adult quickly yeah yeah yeah yeah so because the idea of a 13 year old commuting by bus I presume uh bus no bus to ferry in New York City yeah wow yeah yeah at what did I leave at like five in the morning and I would come home at eight nine at night did you love it I loved every minute of it it was um I'll get there I'll get there so when I was 13 like my freshman year I made a friend who was really into Wicca and there was a bookstore around the corner from our high school and so we would go and like read the the new age section you know and so she gave me a book that said that I could be a Christian and practice witchcraft like because that was This Woman's story like she was I think Episcopalian and she was like no it's totally compatible and so because I had just had this confirmation experience I was like oh well I don't want to betray my grandparents that was really what it was about I don't want to like make them upset but this other thing sounds really amazing and what what about it sounded amazing you know it was all about control okay it was all about control it offered this framework to be able to control your environment to control the weather to control your inner state to control the people around you whether that was uh through actual spells or astral projection I was really into so I kind of like amassed this for lack of a better term New Age kind of set of practices and beliefs around me and please spend some time on what might seem to you the mundane details because there's a lot of people who are listening who have no idea about oh sure often I'm actually really really interested because I'm sure when they were presenting you can have this control it was done in a sort of benevolent sounding way it sounded like a fairy tale it sounded like a fairy tale it was like and I think there was something about that that really resonated like there's this whole Unseen World that I always suspected was there and now they're telling me it's really real yeah and the reality you know that I that I was trying to operate in and that I believed in like I could be part of that are you kidding me it was like candy you know so now is it the girl telling you this your 13 year old friend or is it the books that you decided to read okay both so we were really into it together yeah and so it's important to know that this was pre-internet yeah I remember that it was pre-internet and it was pre-like Sabrina the Teenage Witch and you know those TV shows and stuff this is this is like 1990 you know and so the only access that we had to anything was in this bookstore and it was like a not a Barnes Noble but it was a a big chain bookstore okay so it wasn't like oh we were going to East West books down on the 13th Street you know that would have been cooler it would have been like what a grumpy old man who runs it is upset that you've come into his door yeah probably and like it's you know I I can't remember what East West was like at the time it's a real bookstore East West um but yeah you know and we would go to like these occult shops and buy herbs and you know all this stuff but we didn't know how to find other people to basically form a coven with so what is a coven a coven would be a a group of witches that would practice together basically so it was just her and I kind of muddling along and and reinforcing each other and trying stuff and whatever um so that was like that was what we were into we were also into you know fantasy books and dragons and lore and all that stuff I mean I was not your typical 13 year old girl okay if anime were cool back then would have you been into that no good no not Adam I didn't know it was possible to be super into dragons and everyone I know who's super into anime is also into like DND well my first boyfriend was into DND so yeah that's my connection cool um no but we were we were into like you know you know the Cure and like just anything kind of dark and spooky and um and just like otherworldly you know yeah but it was more of a oh one comic we did read we didn't read anime but we read elfquest okay I don't know okay so I'll just let you imagine what elfquest is okay yeah you can still get it today it's a good comic yeah it's the only comic I can actually like understand because I don't really do Comics but anyway um so you know so we were practicing and the thing that I was really really into above anything else was astral projection and what's that that is um the the belief that you can separate your soul from your body so you can like literally lift yourself out of your body and watch yourself and travel around and go to places and things like that so I really wanted to do that sounds great you know like I felt pretty trapped by my body yeah you know for reasons that you can imagine from what I said before so one day oh I'll tell you this one thing about the control part so because I was in art school you know I was drawing all the time and I would draw on the subway a lot and I traveled with this pack of kids that all went to LaGuardia and we were up early in the morning you know it was like a very kind of tight-knit group and so I was drawing uh this dagger that was like a witch's dagger it had like symbols on it and stuff I'm sitting on the the subway drawing that and this kid comes over to me and goes what are you trying keep in mind we're like 13 14. can you imagine like your precious little kids right and I looked up at him and I went it's a witch's day like that like I just so wanted to be like nobody was gonna get anything over on me like nobody was gonna like think I was you know naive or cute or vulnerable or anything like that like I was in the driver's seat and so I was gonna tell you what this creepy thing was you know so fast forward okay so I'm like 14 15. and my parents uh divorced my mom and I stepped up so my mom and I moved up to the upper west side and we lived in a studio apartment that was about half the size of this room and she was seeing somebody so she was never home so essentially I was on my own from 15. I cooked for myself I got myself going in the more I never saw my mom I think I saw her in the apartment twice in the whole time we lived there so I would come home from school which was five blocks away or whatever walk home promptly like get out my book on astral projection and I would lay down and I would try to separate from my body this was like my after school activity you know and one day I felt like I was coming out and I could kind of like see with my eyes closed I could I was getting this sense that I could do that and just as I felt like I was maybe like an inch or two above my body the phone rang and was my boyfriend and he was like hey what's going on you know and I'm like ah and I felt I felt myself slam back into my body like as if I was hit by a truck and I started shaking talking to him and I'm like uh I can't really talk right now like my voice is trembling and I started to notice my fingers turning black oh my it was really freaky so anyway I hung up with him and just tried to calm myself down and stop shaking and whatever and then I kind of got over it and went on my memory way never thought about it again except that I started having uncontrollable thoughts disgusting like gross like pornographic racist like all these horrible thoughts and it and it was torturous it was like all day every day from the minute I woke up to the time I went to bed all these thoughts it was like a it was like a four-lane highway going like crossing my brain and I couldn't make it stop like nothing I would try to be like I don't think that way like this isn't even me and it felt like somebody else was thinking thoughts into my brain so I wonder should I tell you the conclusion of this story now or because it it didn't resolve for quite a time later whatever you want but did you share this with your 13 year old friend the fellow which I don't think so yeah what about the uh coming out of your body thing because that it seems like if I was practicing Witchcraft and I found some quote unquote success in that area yeah that would be something I would want to share and encourage for others if I thought it was a good thing I might have shared it with her yeah I might have shared that with her but I probably wouldn't have shared the like no no um so around that time too I made a friend who was a Hari Krishna and um so I started going to the Hare Krishna Temple with her yeah and dancing before idols and doing all this uh this crazy stuff and eating vegetarian food it was it was a party it was like a party all the time dancing like crazy you know being like letting my hippiness really come to the fore you know so it kind of developed more even more into this kind of syncretist um set of practices and and beliefs like but the one thing that I took away from that time with the hare krishnas was that God was personal like first of all that there was such a thing as God whatever they called him and that he saw me so and that also my my friend told a story about um she was like saying her prayers on her hard Krishna beads or whatever and um she was in a van with a with a plate of food on her lap and they hit a bump and the food went all over her and she felt like God was laughing with her and she felt like God had a sense of humor and that really struck me like oh it kind of broke my brain a little bit it was like God is personal he sees me and he has a sense of humor like he's not just a random being or deity out there in the universe like he actually has personality did you continue to practice Astro astral projection projection after that point like when you were with the hare krishnas did you continue to read witchcraft books yes okay yeah yeah for sure and I was vegetarian from like a pretty young age and you know so I was kind of on board with all of this um you know these practices and things and I and I thought it's important to say you know the way that witchcraft is presented even now is that it's just light you know it's like you're shedding all the trappings of organized religion and man-made things and whatever and you're just like you're letting your spirit kind of be free and and just kind of float around and and do good for people and um you even hear this from like the the satanists now like um like the the thing that happened with Target with a designer with Target who's a Satanist but like doesn't really believe that Satan exists but also believes that Satan is really for you and like is is like all about love and I'm like okay so with Wicca the Wicca itself is kind of like it's a syncretist religion it's not it has trappings of ancientness but it's not really it's pretty modern and it's kind of bringing all it's like what I did like bringing all these kind of practices together and kind of making a religion out of it you know um but we would have definitely said that we were wielding light you know for sure like we didn't want to hurt anybody we didn't believe in we didn't believe in the devil we didn't believe in demons maybe we believed in spirit beings or something like that or Spirit guides you know but it was all very like it's all very chill man very chill this reminds me I'm reading the brothers again so yeah young and become insufferable throughout this interview no I've been reading the brothers for like 10 years it's okay I love it but um when fathers awesome talks to the the holy women and one of them he quotes a doctor he once knew who said The more I love Humanity the less I love my neighbor and that idea is whenever I hear people being effusive about love and light I wonder how they treat people who are closest to them well I'm reading the um biography of Mother Maria okay do you know who she is she was a Orthodox nun during uh in Nazi occupied France she said the same thing she said you you can't love Humanity you know if anyone that she's met that loves Humanity hates the individual she probably got it from Dostoevsky yeah and I see that in uh certain political movements today let's say certain uh people who might Riot and that sort of thing where there's a lot of talk of love and peace where there is no peace yeah absolutely and a lot of talk of these kind of generic um a generic sense of love and a generic sense of uh justice or helping the oppressed but the but those people never have faces yeah yeah you know it's not about the individuals sitting next to you because that person might be a Nazi so right you know it's yeah it is very kind of anonymized and faceless and um I remember a university Professor saying uh it's easy to love Humanity because Humanity never leaves their garbage can cans out too late they don't play Loud Music they don't they don't chew ice in front of you which to me is the worst offense oh real okay be careful worse than that is when people I'm gonna just keep saying this until I shame everybody into stopping when people sit in a quiet room and they allow their phone to Bing Bing yeah Bing that just says that because I do that and he wants me to stop no you got to turn that stuff I basically refusing it's not on during the show if there was somebody sitting across from me and they were chewing ice while their phone was binging and then I noticed they had a Disney Castle tattoo oh dear I don't think I could of them yeah yeah I would become like there are videos that test your the limits of Your Love yeah you did like somebody's phone went off in the Cigar Lounge like a week ago and you went are you gonna turn that off and it was like we weren't even I just feel like I'm gonna embrace my grumpy old man at this point no I feel like I'm gonna become uh the least kind old lady you know what I mean like there's part of me that's like Lord I want to become more loving like you you know but yeah there are people who need discipline who didn't get it yeah my gosh listen yeah when when I consider what my family have to put up with me I need to be more merciful to the bingers and the ice chewers it's a pretty short path what do you mean I'm pretty sure a path between like my judgmentalism and me realizing oh no oh I'm the a-hole yeah yeah but okay um loving loving light dispelling the darkness totally Freedom man yeah it felt great yeah it is so attractive like I went through a phase in my teenage years of new age tapes that I would listen to uh and meditation and whenever even the most new agey new age tapes or books that I got referenced heaven and it wasn't the sort of Christian Heaven but just that Christian language turned me off completely and just put it away anything to do with it um but I liked kind of this and what is that I think it's I want there to be more to life yeah I want there to be this hidden world that I've always suspected existed I want to be special I don't want demands placed upon me unless they're so General that I can't possibly break them well essentially right you want to be your own God that's what any of us want in our sort of natural Untamed State we want to just be our own guy you know yeah but it becomes hell yeah well yeah and it and it did yeah very quickly for me so around that time you know I told you I was doing a lot of theater yeah yeah at this Catholic Church actually and I started playing guitar they did a you know folk mass and everything and so sorry that's why you're Orthodox today well listen you know I still love those like um what is it Gary diggle is that his name I don't know it's like Catholic renewal Focus yeah stuff well that's where I learned to play guitar this was our tradition as well yeah so even if it's not optimal or not even good yeah but you can't help but be sympathetic to things that you were raised with that spoke to you at one point you kind of see how like Creed things My Own Prison come on [Music] yeah you kind of see how things um are like mile markers along your path you know and it's I don't know I think I have less resentment toward those things in a way yeah you know I see how God was always um trying to get my attention in the ways that I could hear at the time like I had a bus driver who used to share the gospel with me like every time I got on the bus I was like yeah man whatever couldn't hear it at the time yes yes I had a classmate whose mom would would give her Bible verses in her lunch every day and we would just make fun of her like yeah you know mock her mercilessly Allison I'm sorry if you're listening but um so so those kinds of things I couldn't hear it's only in hindsight that I realized oh he was always trying to get my attention in these little ways you know and even if at the time it didn't work now I see it you know that he cared yeah he was calling me so these these friends also went to this youth group it was like an Evangelical youth group they were always inviting me and I was like I'm not going to your youth group like I'm a witch like I don't think there's a place for me there you know what I mean yeah so for like I didn't know this till much later but for two years straight they had a prayer group that would go up on the Bayonne Bridge on Tuesday nights and they would look out over the what is it the Arthur Kill I don't know what that is in Staten Island that the Bayonne Bridge goes over but um and they would pray for me for two years because they decided to choose the most hopeless case well yeah they were like okay she's the longest shot yeah if she can get saved like you know so they prayed for me for two years and during that time um about a year into that I would say I agreed to go to the youth group and it was pretty fun you know like I could play the guitar we you know we hung out we played games like the youth leaders were amazing they took us very seriously they didn't patronize us they weren't trying to be our buddies they didn't wear like Hawaiian shirts and have goatees like nothing like that oh I look at him because he's always wearing Hawaiian shirts Hawaiian shirts are the best shirts or a backwood baseball cap that's another thing I can't handle cap is over 15 years old now yeah here's what's worse than the Backwoods baseball cap even worse than that is when people use that reflective sticker and they don't take that off I will not I will not stand for that sorry I don't know or like I don't yeah this is why I Think Jesus no seriously people like you're the worst I'm like I know yeah I know I'm tall try being in me way worse than you think yeah yeah so I had these amazing youth leaders and uh anything I could throw at them because I did like anything they would say about the Bible or about God or whatever I'd be like um have you ever thought that you know Jesus was married married to Mary Magdalene like I just read that in a book you know I was such a smart alec you know thought I knew everything and they just I don't know they they didn't say it outright but they were probably thinking bless your little heart you know yeah can can we smack you upside the head now like thank God for patient Christians oh my gosh when I went on my trip to Rome where I came to Christ or he came to me I was with a bunch of young Catholic teenagers yeah and I remember just swearing just trying to shock people I don't know what that was I like shocking people I did that so much I was like where does that desire come from it's just a teenage is it yeah it's the control it's like I like I'm not gonna let anybody push me around or dictate my reality I'm I'm On Top how does that couple with a desperate desire to be wanted and accepted because that's what teenagers are isn't it like that's what I was I wanted to shock you I wanted to be aggressive but I deep down really wanted to be welcomed and accepted I think it was like yeah because you you want to know that whoever is whoever you're trying to shock can handle it you know like can you handle this yeah you know what I mean yeah and if you can all right maybe maybe that's gonna trust you you know but just to wrap up that story the people on that plane with me and on that pilgrimage were very patient with me yeah yeah like your friends unbelievably patient with like my preaching vegetarianism and like oh gosh I I look back on it and I just cringe I'm like 15 16 year old me holy cow wow so anyway I was going to this youth group for about a year and I think I would have really liked you I think we would have been friends yeah yeah I think so I I've watched some interviews and I think man yeah I've only been friends in high school I was uh yeah yeah so okay so I so this youth group had a real premium on on memorizing scripture and then learning the scriptures they were so good at that there was nothing dumbed down about this group it was amazing and so one night we were going through um Galatians 5. okay and they start reading the the list of things according to the flesh right and it's like you know adultery sexual immorality but and I'm just like yada and all of a sudden it said sorcery and Witchcraft and I was like what like I thought I could do both of these things it says not to do that and it like it was the first kind of like interruption into this whole thing that I had built around myself like this this armor of spirituality that I had built around myself and it was like the first arrow that kind of pierced and made me go oh crap I was gonna swear but I'm trying I'm trying to get better me too um so I don't know it kind of like went in and out you know kept going for a few months and are you still having these compulsive thoughts all the time all the time but trying to kind of stuff them down and and I was doing really great in school like I was finally like finding myself as an artist and um getting to know what I wanted to do with my life and like from the outside you would never have guessed that all this was going on inside and at that time also like the abuse at home got really really bad um and I just I never wanted to be home like the the things that my I I want to be careful how I talk about my mom obviously but um it was bad okay the um the the verbal and the um sometimes physical abuse was was awful so but but I was putting on this I was putting on these errors of respectability and of professionalism and you know I was gigging by this time I was already playing shows out you know I was really you know living by myself really kind of trying to put this forward um by the way when I say like going home or encountering my mom or whatever it was kind of like even though they were separated I was living in this apartment but my siblings and my stepdad were still living in the house in Staten Island and occasionally my mom would go back there and sleep or like occasionally we would find ourselves in the same environment never at the apartment but sometimes at my stepdad's house and that's where I would encounter you know a lot of this so anyway um it's a Friday night I'm 16. it's the end of my junior year and I went to my friend's house and we were hanging out in his basement in his room in the basement and he tried to make a move on me now the whole kind of scene of sexuality for me was was also very fraught because at that point I didn't know about this whistleblowing that I had done as a three-year-old I didn't remember the abuse at that point I was just confused I was all over the place I didn't know if I was straight or gay I didn't know like what I wanted to do or not do with guys or with girl it was so confusing and so when this guy um you know it was the first time I had received like an overt um solicitation and it it confused the heck out of me I didn't know what to do because I had no reason to say no and I didn't like him but I also had no reason to say no so I remembered very conveniently that it was Friday and at seven o'clock there was going to be youth group so I said oh I have a thing I gotta get to youth group so I asked his mom to drive me so we're driving over there you know and I get to the church and the the way the church was was like youth group was in the basement and the sanctuary was up here but the north X was like had stairs and it was like a kind of nether region right it was like the in-between you know so I just sat on the steps like I couldn't bring my I was so ashamed at that episode that it just happened and by my thoughts and all of this stuff I was just in this state of like utter confusion um is it Dusty who says that uh when you look into the abyss the abyss looks back into you is it Nietzsche it sounds like me too that was what it was like I couldn't bring myself to go downstairs I just sat on the steps and I started to SOB my eyes out nobody was around and I had this vision of the abyss and I was looking straight into it and it was like on the outside everything looked good I was you know cool funky artist in the 90s in New York you know like very much aware of that kind of persona of mine and on the inside it was just like annihilation I had no reason to live or die I had no reason to sleep with somebody or not sleep with somebody I had no reason boys or girls didn't matter like I had no reason for anything in life so I'm sitting there sobbing looking over the abyss and one of the youth leaders comes up and sees me a mess and he literally just sits down next to me and he just stays with me it doesn't say a word we must have sat there for half an hour I'm just bawling my eyes out he's just letting me cry and then finally he says you know people are gonna start coming up here in a bit do you want to go in the sanctuary so we go in there again he just lets me cry and cry and cry and finally he said four words to me do you want Jesus and it was like keep in mind too this is not the four spiritual laws this is not catechism this is not a sermon this is do you want Jesus and it was like everything in me like rushed together into this I don't know it was it just rushed together and all of a sudden out of my mouth came yes oh and as soon as I said yes I I had another vision and I mean I was there at the foot of the cross and I was just at his feet like his feet were right here so all I could see just his toes and the nail and in the vision I backed up and I had piles of paper and I just crumpled up these pieces of paper and I just like with all my rage and my Fury I just hurled them at his feet throwing them one after the other just hurling him at his feet and they would pile up and pile up and pile up and pile up until they hit his little pinky toe and then everything disappeared and it was just his feet again and I did that like two three times and then I heard the youth leader say to me um well do you want to pray with me and we said some prayer I don't remember the prayer but I I knew that I knew that I knew that everything was different from that point on um and I didn't know why because I didn't know what had happened I just knew that I met this person so the next day uh we we went to some amusement park or something we're on the bus and I said to my friends I think I got like saved last night like I don't know what happened but like this thing happened and they were all like you know rejoicing and happy like oh my God you know and I'm like I don't know what happened but that night when I went home from that youth group um he gave he like handed me a Bible from the Pew you know it was just like freaking love Protestants who love Jesus you know what I mean yeah yeah there was no intrusion it was like he let that moment be as holy as it needed to be what a beautiful healing too because you know so many of us have heard stories or experienced things where we were preyed upon in our vulnerable moments and you've had that in your history to have a man sit by you and to not try to wound you to try to take from you right what a beautiful healing thing yeah yeah it was amazing I'm still in contact with him like thank God I want his number just so I can tell him I love him you know what I mean yeah his name's Bert crab he's amazing Bert Bert yeah no way he's not 60s plus he's not he's not no okay well it's close yeah so um yeah so I so he handed me this Pew Bible and he's like go ahead and read this I read that Bible all night from where I don't even my Genesis like what did you stop I think the gospels yeah I didn't even know too was like I just kind of opened it and I like I like fell head over heels in love with Jesus I was like oh my God you were here this whole time it was yeah and I'm telling you like it was not very long and it wasn't people telling me to do this or that or not do this or that it was like you don't need this anymore yes that's over that's done that's done I never looked back with the new age stuff like I I just like wasn't interested anymore I just it was awesome him it was just all him it wasn't even church or youth group Culture or whatever it was just him it was him um so I'm gonna I'm gonna close the loop now on the um on the astral projection story so it's about a year later and I'm on a winter retreat with the youth group at what Retreat a winter retreat so the speaker you know did his little talk and then he's like if you want to stay behind in the chapel to pray and you know blah blah blah go ahead Chapel's yours so at the time I was struggling with some uh feelings of unforgiveness toward my steps at stepdad so I was like well stay here and pray for forgiveness for my stepdad yeah I'm sitting there it's kind of going nowhere I'm like ah Lord help me help me forgive him uh and the same youth leader comes over and he's like hey how you doing and I'm like well actually I'm I'm here like praying for forgiveness but the real problem is I'm having these uncontrollable thoughts because they were still happening yeah all the time and he goes um by any chance were you ever involved in witchcraft and I was like damn it Bert you know me right you know and I was like how did you know he goes why don't you let me pray for you so he starts praying for me I don't even know what he was praying he wasn't like doing an exorcism or anything like that all of a sudden I felt this being manifest and I just start screaming get get out of me and I felt like I was gonna vomit it was horrendous and you know he was praying for me I was telling it to get out and then all of a sudden quiet and the thoughts were gone it was over wow I was free totally free yeah how'd a bird react I think he was happy yeah but what a guy yeah so then what happened oh my gosh well even just that day what happened you just got up left the church yeah or something yeah it was like never struggled with that again it's been 30 years I just want to pause and say that um in a day in a day like this where truth feels so under assault and the Traditions that ought to be ours by right were robbed us we can be um maybe two well triumphalest in our Christian tradition yeah and what I'm about to say isn't bad it's all the same and whatever differences we have don't matter but I think we forget that the Lord Jesus Christ is at work in all of these communities and his name is power yeah and he doesn't change even if the communities do um he's God you know um and that's not I'm not a I'm not a um I'm not a syncretist you know I am ecumenical within Christianity um and I would say I'm but it's like I think what I find so frustrating is I know that there would there would be a version of me that would want to tell Bert to get it together and to just finally realize this that or the other thing yes that I as a Catholic believe and all of that would have been I think true yeah and yet here he is calling on the name of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is liberating this lovely young girl you know the worst case the hardest case yeah yeah the long shot the simpleton the least qualified wow yeah all right yeah so yeah where we go from here did you share your faith with your mum or are you not interacting with her at this point I did share with them uh with my mom and my stepdad my stepdad was not happy so like even though I really had no relationship to Judaism at that time I I think he felt a bit betrayed you know that he had tried to raise me Jewish and maybe it didn't take or something but I but really from the very first you know the very earliest days of being a Christian it clicked for me like when I would read the gospels I would be like this is like so Jewish like it's happening in Israel like everybody's Jewish uh you know what I mean it just made sense to me in a way that um I would find it I would still feel a little bit alienated from my friends who it seemed like they thought Jesus came from France or something or like you know actually they were all um a lot of them were new regions so like Norwegians yeah okay like Norwegian Jesus or something you know I'm like oh he wasn't Norwegian but yeah yeah so so how did your Christian Life develop after that well um I was really really influenced also in high school by I had a lot of friends who were black from the black church and they're kind of like charism and um intimacy and friendship with the Lord like made a really big impact on me um and I felt like that was really deeply part of me um you know so that was like high school and college were actually like that you know I was really um I would say I I didn't go full time to a black church but I felt very comfortable in black churches um maybe because of the music that I was used to like we sang a lot of gospel in high school and you know that felt very familiar and comfortable to me um yeah so I went to college for illustration I did a very short stint one year in scene design for theater in North Carolina and as a New Yorker going down to North Carolina I was like get me back home I can't do this it was too much culture shock you know it was still very segregated at the time in the in the early 90s so I didn't feel comfortable with that but then I knew like I have to illustrate fairy tales that's what I'm gonna do with my life so I transferred schools I went to Parsons school of design for illustration um that's all I wanted to do and I think too as an artist I know like a lot of Christians have difficulty reconciling the Arts with their faith I think I've come to understand that this seems to be more of a Protestant problem because of the kind of iconoclastic atmosphere you know having images in church would be too Catholic or something like that you know and we don't we don't want to do that you know I encountered a lot of that and I'm like what I don't even we understand what you're talking about like it's Jesus like you guys like him too right I don't know yeah these these kinds of things have not really always made a lot of sense to me you know yeah how did you I want to know how you became Orthodox oh that was only last year yeah yeah so then so and how long have you been married 25 years oh golly yeah wow I get the feeling that you're older than you look you look young but thank you 25 man thank you I've been married 17 years yeah so did your did you marry your husband was he a Christian yeah Protestant practicing Evangelical yeah yeah we met in college um we were playing at the same music festival we were both musicians and artists and um I kind of accidentally visited to him at his college I was going to visit his friend um not in a romantic way or anything but anyway they were friends and uh quickly realized that he was a serious artist and also a Christian and this confused me because I was the only one that I knew that was like that I'm like oh at two pretend um that's not the right reference he wasn't about to stab Caesar but anyway so I um I fell in love with him hard right you know like he he took me to his art studio and like showed me around I'm like oh my gosh you're really good you're not just you know you're not making Jesus junk or like yeah Lions holding flaming swords or something like that you know what I mean like oh God forgive me um necklace ever he did not wear a shell necklace did he have bleach tips never all right no idea shaved head okay yeah he's shaved head and round glasses and a dirty white T-shirt nice yeah he's the best okay yeah and like copper bell bottoms okay it's like exactly all right yeah yeah so we've been married 25 years we got married as soon as I graduated from college yeah I have two kids okay yeah adults wow crazy it is crazy my son's in the Marines holy mackerel how old are you do I say I think I I've never understood why this is an offensive question but apparently the the females find this offensive I'm 46. okay I don't feel 46 yeah I think I thought you were definitely younger than that that's the joy of the Lord Matt praise God enjoy the Lord so did you and your husband have a I mean a faith-based relationship have you absolutely in fact okay so I uh we'll just scroll back a little bit right so to this the subject of teenage sexuality right so all this confusion that I had you know um I dated a lot and um I never went all the way and I think part of it was that I knew that I had the trauma for my childhood and I just like did not want it at all like I would have been in fact when he and I met I was looking into enjoining a lay order and like possibly just being celibate yeah you know um but I knew that I did not want to do uh the whole dating scene I didn't want to do that I was like I just I'm gonna meet somebody and get married if I'm supposed to be married that'll be when I'm like 35 way down the line you know and then when I met him and it was like oh my gosh it's him or nobody um we just developed a friendship because I didn't think he had any feelings for me at all and we just developed this really deep friendship that was about our faith and about living Pure Living for the Lord um I know people have a lot of things to say about purity culture but for me it was a godsend like the um the message that I didn't have to do anything was like I don't have to do anything I don't like have to give my body to somebody just for whatever it was such a gift you know so when I met him and like you know we both wanted to wait till marriage and and we did and it was like oh relief praise God yeah how did you Journey to the Orthodox church or am I moving too quickly so it was uh we we moved out of the city um you know the New York area six years ago and we thought we moved into like New England little New England town and we thought oh we'll just go to the local church I don't care if it's Presbyterian I don't you know I just want to be the the lady that shows up with the coffee cake and like I'm there for 30 years and all I care about is I hear the gospel like I don't care I don't want to hear any kind of weird stuff or new ideas or whatever because we had been part of a church for a Dozen Years where my husband was a pastor and um it kind of deteriorated very fast and we we had to leave that church under quite a bit of duress um we were actually excommunicated from that church um because things got very culty um and so I didn't want Church to be complicated in any way you know I didn't want to go along with the whims of the pastor or the latest personality like I've never really had much to do with Christian culture in that way I don't really read Christian books you know like popular books or any I don't know who the authors of note are or the musician I don't listen to Christian music you know um so I just was not very familiar with that culture and I thought the letter the less Church culture I can have in that way the better I'll just bring the coffee cake light candle that's it you know so for three years or so we were going everywhere we could trying everything and everything felt like a performance and it felt like they were putting on a show for the people that were not sitting in the room it was like all this wishful thinking for who they would prefer to be there except the people who were actually oh I get that do you know what I mean oh yeah and you know our kids were teenagers at the time and they weren't having it they didn't like the youth group scene and I'm like this isn't like my youth group yeah this is so fake like oh my gosh so I was researching for one of my books a cloud aboutrageous blue and I needed some like medieval research and um I had just started talking to Jonathan pegeot at the time and he mentioned Orthodoxy he mentioned the OCA the Orthodox Church in America and I thought that sounds kind of like medieval I bet I could get some research done there so I you know Googled a church in my area I found one 15 minutes away we went to visit we went to a Divine Liturgy and the priest took us uh you know made a separate appointment with me and took me around the whole church showed me everything every icon answered all my questions and I got great research for the book right and then covet hit and my kids anyway were like not really able to stand for two hours during The Divine Liturgy you know they were a little too young for that so covet hits we do the whole Jammy church thing you know online Jammy church with your hot mug of coffee I was dying I was like this is not church I need Community I need people you know and the the culture in our town was not very social I'm like I'm like an extrovert I'm like dying on the vine here so finally I told Ben um listen I'm just gonna start going to Vespers at that at that cool little Orthodox Church over there and I'll just like get filled up and then wherever we go on Sunday morning is fine it's irrelevant well I kept going he started coming with me and finally we thought let's just try another Divine Liturgy so the kids came back with us and it was like instant it clicked it just clicked for all of us and I think what we really loved about it was this feeling like none of it was there to cater to us at all this isn't about you it's not about us there were no screens there were no colored lights there was no hot cups I mean there was a smoke machine you know sure old school Father Tom Soroka told me that joke yesterday um and yeah it just felt like the it felt like it fit somehow it felt like oh this is what's going on around the throne for eternity and we just get the privilege to step into it every Sunday and participate in what's already going on it was wonderful you know um Martin Shaw calls it uh do you know about Martin Shaw he's an English Storyteller yeah yeah he just became Orthodox and he says the first time he stepped into a Divine Liturgy it felt like he was stepping into a Christian dream you know and like other people have called it like a living fairy tale like the you know the fairy tale that's true that I think C.S Lewis you know says that about the gospel and you know myth the myth that is true thank you thank you same thing so yeah so it just fits somehow and um I think we went through catechism for about a year and workers mated last fall beautiful yeah so well that's beautiful let's let's take a pause and come back okay thank you [Laughter] [Music] any sinner is capable of being the great Saint and then he's safe is also capable of being a great sinner a great sinner a great sinner [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] the secret therefore of character development is the realization of this power that there is in each and every one of us golden foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] to add raids Freedom read them uh hi everybody I want to tell you about two of our sponsors that I want you to check out the one is Emmaus Academy which is part of the Saint Paul Center Which Scott Hahn runs and they've just created this new digital learning platform and it's really quite cool I know and you know what it's like just to waste how many hours a week do you think just sort of ferreting around on YouTube and Hulu or whatever else looking at things that you probably is doing no edification it's not even restoring you in a kind of natural way but this Emmaus Academy has a lineup of really amazing teachers who teach scripture so if you want to want to love scripture you try and you feel bad because you know you should like it more than you currently do not that it's all about feelings of course but please check out Saint paulcenter.com Matt click the link in the description below when you sign up over there you'll get two weeks for free and that's access to all of these amazing courses they put together and these courses aren't just Scott Hahn sitting in front of a laptop top lid you're just chatting to a bad camera it's actually really really highly produced stuff um John Berg's movie we had on the other day they talk about the gospels they took they have my spiritual father father Boniface Hicks talking about prayer it's really quite amazing so if you want to grow in the faith and in your love of scripture Saint Paul St Paul center.com mad click the link in the description and and check them out I also want to say thank you to hello you tell me about hello since you use it oh my you do the ad for me I'll pay you later I don't know well hallow is a great app that helps you to stay consistent with prayer on a daily basis I have really enjoyed it it's so good I was listening to it this morning they now have these new daily exit Jesus from the daily readings so I was listening to that today um it's really beautiful uh the other night I played a sleep story to my son there is just so much honor and it's so well produced I think it's the greatest app I've ever used maybe Delta is better I don't know but like maybe Delta's got a great app I like the Delta app Uber's probably a good app but this probably is the best app the fella who started this used to be into Buddhism and and things like that and there was a mindfulness app um started by a Buddhist and and he was into that and when he became a Catholic he's like we should start something for Catholics to help them pray and meditate yeah it's really good if you go to hallow.com Matt click the link in the description you can try it for free for three months it's awesome 90 days I did try it free for three months and then I kept my subscription because it was so good it's yeah it is true apollo.com Matt I'm not going to tell you what any of the competitors codes are yeah yeah and if you sign up if you sign up on the app it's more expensive and apple gets a cut that's why we're saying go to hallow.com Matt sign up there look here I'm going to give you a total out here on your calendar set a reminder for two months that tells you to cancel that app not three months because then you'll forget two months in a day then you cancel it and you get the you the next you cancel it before the next charge and you're still there for three months yeah stay big brain you're welcome do it but I don't think you will I think you'll use it and you're like this is really great and then you'll want to support this amazing group of people who are doing good stuff yeah yeah I sent you a slack by the way you sent me a slack uh oh okay sweet and all that checks that uh if you guys send super chats will try to get amassed but no guarantees on it because we give priority to locals also can we make an announcement about this local stream that you're doing for me tomorrow oh yeah sorry uh so tomorrow at noon we will be live streaming um and it will be only it'll be an unlit the link will be only shared to locals but it's not a local supporter stream we'll also be having it for people who are signed up to our locals for free so if you uh are not yet signed up to the locals even as a free member go to Matt frad.locals.com and sign up tomorrow at noon um Melanie the business manager and matinee's boss yeah let's be honest yeah she's our boss who's the greatest person ever have put together a birthday surprise for Matt and that's right I don't know what's happening I don't know Matt has no idea what's going on so if you want to experience Matt's surprise at the surprise along with Matt it's going to be Thursday jumping out of a cake naked let's see that speaking about compulsive thoughts all right anyway would it be okay if we took questions I love these people and I don't want to give them the shaft like last time we had Dr Burks we're on we didn't ask a single question yeah we didn't um yeah cause he had to go we're gonna have him back on real soon though he was amazing so try I I know you might feel like you're doing some sort of a Injustice to the questioner by giving a short answer but try to give a short answer because we have so many questions but that's okay sure Tony RVA says what would you say to a curious teenager who is dabbling in Wicca to think and thinks it's harmless it's not harmless you let demons in keep going keep going sorry yeah you're playing with demons like I mean everybody who's come out of Wicca will tell you I didn't realize what I was playing with Satan masquerades as an angel of Light and he really really does so don't think that for you it's going to be different but if someone had said that to you when you were into wicker that probably wouldn't have helped uh nobody did say that to me they could have given you the choice it's kind of like you know what could you say to a teenager who wants to have sex before marriage you could at least say don't do it you could at least no one said that to me you could at least say there's another way there's an alternative path this leads to this this leads to that you know what you could do is you could have them listen to this show Tony oh yeah you could do that and we'll be doing some clips that are specifically on this topic so check that out sometimes you know how like the universal is told in the particulars you know yes so sometimes you can tell somebody like Universal truths or whatever but unless you hear somebody telling their own story it's just gonna be kind of meaningless sometimes Kyle Whittington says it's very easy for someone to feel like they're too far gone to ever approach a faith-like Catholicism or holy Orthodoxy what does that path to Christ look like for someone who went off the deep end I mean the prodigal of the para the parable of the Prodigal Son yeah I mean nobody is too far look at Paul you know he was complicit in Murder yeah he stood by holding the the coats of people you know what I mean it's like what you mean um you know I write about the Holocaust you know and so a lot of what I'm interested in is um the people who may not have um pulled the trigger so to speak or put the zyklon B gas in the you know in the shoot right but the ordinary people who just kind of stood by and did nothing and were complicit in Murder like yeah you know what I mean God can God can heal anybody and bring them to him this is a nice Point can you just quickly tell us about some of your books oh sure and and so I said this to you in the car I think or when we were walking over I forget when I said it I was on the phone with you you sent me a book that you had written now people sent me lots of things all the time I just they I don't even know how they get our address just shows up at the studio and and I sometimes I look at it and I think this is great like good for them but I I don't think this is actually amazing your book was like that and I don't know if you brought any of those books like what my book was the book you wrote about the two brothers no no on both sides of the uh the uh the Berlin Wall I mean I didn't I've only read like three or four chapters I've got to be honest but I was shocked at how good it was um did you bring any of your books with you I did can you please sign one book for my daughter Avila when you meet her and give it to us no I have I have a good parent to read good books because these books are for not just for adults so I write for young adult I write young adult historical fiction yeah um but I've been an illustrator for you know 30 years or so and um we have a link to her books to vespa's books in the description to her and they're really really good like I'm so honored to have you on the show it's so funny because usually when I'm doing an interview it's about my books yeah and we have we're only now starting to talk about what I actually writes very poor fiction I know what good fiction looks like well I didn't start writing until I was um 35. okay yeah I was just an illustrator and a songwriter you know I journaled a lot I wrote a lot of poetry bad poetry and some good poetry yeah and songs but I you know I'm on a real journey with the Lord man who knows who knows Jason of old says I came out of Norse paganism and struggled off and on for 11 years with a desire to go back to the gods even though I know they are demons do you have that struggle and if so what do you do any particular devotions that help hmm oh that's such a good question so I'm not because I had such a personal Encounter With Jesus um I'm not really tempted to go back to that stuff because it just feels so Hollow to me now um I I figure like all the riches are in him and like I can only ever eternally get closer and discover more about who he is um so I do I do feel quite devoted to um now I don't know how theologically I this sounds but I'm I'm quite devoted to the wound in his side um I feel like that is where I live um and Mother Maria scrubstova talks about this too just like um you know just being in the wound like being in the wound of the world basically and I do feel that because of my story I always live there I live in the wound but in such a deep joy in him like that is unshakable I I feel tucked right up there by his heart like tucked right there like it's hard to no I know what you mean because I live in the womb of Mary ah I'm constantly just hanging out there yeah it's so weird to people who don't know that kind of language yeah it's like we're gonna lose we're going to lose viewers real quick with this stuff no I'm kidding but but I mean if you think about the Sacred Heart Like that's what I'm talking about I'm I'm like tucked up there you know where it's safe and nothing can hurt me and and it's also where worlds are created and creativity comes from and and joy is there and like so this is this is your devotion this is the in response to this fellow's question that's the devotion um sometimes I am tempted to to say like well that certain practice like what's so wrong with that like can't I okay so like my massage therapist um suggested that I get a certain Crystal to deal with my stress right and like for many months I was like should I go get that Crystal should I because there's like a crystal shop in my town like should I go and I pass it all the time and be like oh what's the harm what's the harm but then something in me just always checks it and goes yeah there's nothing for you there it's it's an inert rock you know there's nothing for you you know like go take a walk in the woods yeah well maybe to this point more tony asks what are your thoughts on yoga if any do you have any no no pressure to have a bunch of thoughts on yoga I don't have a lot of thoughts on it I did practice it for quite a while um I have friends who teach holy yoga and whatever I I don't know um I I don't feel conviction about it one way or the other I think because I was in the heart Krishna movement I do feel a bit triggered by stuff like that and I just like kind of don't want to go back there but also um I had a car accident 10 years ago that precludes me from doing stuff like yoga really let people know I interviewed a fella called um Alex Frank already in the description you're the man who's a former Yogi and actually let people who have a conviction about it answer that question it was a two-hour one third some great facts in there that people don't know that people should yeah if you if you're someone who's like every time someone's tried to tell me why yoga is wrong I've never been convinced that was me right I was like come on just calm down like not everything has to be evil yeah um but he actually had a really nuanced take on that that I thought I would say like the people that I have listened to that are against yoga I completely see what they're saying yeah yeah um Ethan R says you spoke a good bit on fantasy stories and fairy tales what's your take on the idea that things like d d and Harry Potter or other fantasy stories of demonic do you think fantasy as a genre is something Christians need to avoid where are those lines um I don't think it's something you need to avoid as a genre that would be throwing a lot of babies out with a lot of bath water yeah including Tolkien right right yeah um and Nicholas cotar who's a fantasy writer um because I don't read a lot of it now I would say somebody like Nikki would be more articulate on this point but I would say Harry Potter always felt funky to me to be honest and I didn't let my kids read it and I would tell them why I didn't want them to read it my daughter did wind up reading it in like early high school or middle school because we had talked about it and because I told her what things to look out for so I felt like um and we we did it in conversation with each other and even read it together so yeah stuff like that um I don't know with all my books too I feel like I trust the parent and this is this is a big thing with me is like I don't I write with parents in mind I write with the whole family in mind so I'm not trying to like do an end run around that to kind of like get kids into whatever it is that I'm into yeah I'm not into that um Christian madore says oh I'll be watching what time so that's not a question um okay Grady says as a fellow Ginger what's your favorite Ginger joke oh gosh I don't I don't know any ginger jokes all right he should have shared his sorry yeah um pole lahood he does our timestamps for us he's the best we love you Paul love you Paul I haven't offered to pay him and he's like no he just offers this amazing service for us he's a genius for everybody unironically he's like he's actually yeah not like when you say I'm a genius no no difference he's got a full ride to his college so what a girl if you speak with if you could speak with any saint from the first century who would it be why them and what would you discuss from the first century like the apostles I mean my gosh like my patron saint is Saint Philip the Apostle okay and he's been following me around for a long time since way before I was orthodox so I would definitely I mean I do like have conversations with him like okay teach me how to like do the come and see thing you know yeah like make me better at that you know pray to the Lord that I would like have those kinds of well I might not have the answer but like come and see it like I'll point you to somebody who does you know like let me introduce you to somebody you know and uh you know just like with the gospel like I I wanna be somebody who does isn't just like let me tell you how it's done but just like come come in where I am like it's really nice in here you know there's like a lot of Joy Bert like Bert yeah um Maya says I had similar interests in my youth because of which I have collected a number of books and objects that I had to destroy after my conversion some are still in my parents house waiting for me snatch them did you have a collection yourself and what happened to those items sure did honey child I sure did and I burned them all I burned everything I I burned or tossed everything like all my books I had a nice little bonfire in my garage which wasn't the best idea maybe um like but a better idea than keeping them you know yeah even like um I was really into Led Zeppelin at the time and I couldn't listen to I mean I can now um Love Led Zeppelin but at the time there was music I couldn't listen to I couldn't eat Indian food for a long time that would kind of bring stuff back okay um yeah I would say if you have a funny feeling about it or you know it's connect get rid of it and don't give it to somebody else like pray over it renounce any connection to it and and just to be clear for those watching you're not making you're not saying like my crystals or let's say a Ouija board is on par with Indian food so I know which I know what you mean but just maybe explicate that yeah no of course I'm not saying you should eat Indian food I love Indian food I hate Indian people oh God this took a bad time no my husband's actually about to go to India for the 11th time oh next uh next week but the point was just that during this phase in your life these were things that you were engaging yeah it's like when you know that you were engaged in something and had attachments to like dark spiritual things like you should break those attachments Tiki Masala is that what they call it yeah Masala thank you but he asked a good question they didn't super chat or anything but I like the question so uh okay can you talk about why relics are different than crystals I could see a Protestant misunderstanding and thinking they're the same thing yes and as a former Protestant is that something you had to hmm wow see I'm not schooled and I'm still a noob okay with the whole Orthodox thing um well at the very least you would say you would point to a couple of verses in sacred scripture right like Peter's Shadow or Paul's handkerchief exactly that or the fringes of of Jesus yeah um that had a connection so I would want to say to the person explain those to me like what was it about that because whatever your answer is that's very different to an inert Rock like you said earlier you don't like that I I yeah I mean I see where that person's coming from but I think the difference is the spirit like one is connected to the devil and one is connected to the Lord one's real I want yeah I don't know also I think there's something beautiful about being a humble son and daughter of the church yeah because the church told me that's why I do it because Christians from in all centuries have given reverence to relics I want to answer it this way okay um because I did want to talk to you about relics actually because I did the scavi tour we have Saint Thomas Aquinas in that Relic really there that's pretty cool not all of Thomas but just a small a little bit bigger on the inside um yeah and we we have relics of Saint nectarios in our church and um we had a piece of the True Cross for a while um so Ben and I went to Rome in November like partly because I hadn't had a vacation in Forever um but partly because as we were newly Orthodox and we were visiting our friend over there um I thought oh gosh like I've been to Rome a bunch of times but I've never looked at the ancient roots of our faith so here's a perfect opportunity so I know you're supposed to book the scavi tour like months in advance I didn't either and I got in I got in too wasn't it amazing oh my gosh like I loved it so much I was like um I heard we could see the bones of and they're like talk to the Swiss guards and like I used the best of my Italian which is very Rusty and at long lasting the guy was like come back at 1 30. you know so it was great and we had such an experience there by the time you get to the end and you actually see his bones I was like I was in Theus yeah I think this is what what relics do for me they go they make me say this is all real yeah yeah like it's not in the realm of theory or anything like that you know yeah um so after we came back we saw Paul's chains we you know we were at his tomb in the Saint Paul outside the walls like we saw the chains that he had while he was under house arrest and everything and I think it was after I came home from that that you had the gentleman on who talked about the Shroud mm-hmm isn't that incredible I'm a Believer yeah um because for me it's not just like oh look at this cool object it's like oh the resurrection is real like you know and there's no other way to explain this object so I don't know so anyway I went to Israel in May and that was another thing that was just like it just hit me again and again like this is all I've been walking with the Lord for 30 years yeah you know and it's kind of like the way that I feel about it is that just like Jesus began his ministry at 30. I'm at 30 years now and there's like more ahead for me you know there's like an adventure a new adventure that he's calling me on and Relics feel like part of that um just the tangible reality of our faith and so when I was in Israel I got the uh icon made without hands tattooed on me just to remind me like no this is real and I was I was there like I walked yeah I want to give a shout out to that interview with Father Andrew Dalton which is almost got a million views right now and for good reason if you have not watched that do yourself a favor right yeah that and the Eucharistic Miracles oh by the way I am also type A B blood so I just it's just all these things that feel like little tokens from the Lord no you're really with me like you know you're mine you belong to me so that's my long answer about relics that's beautiful thank you um let's see back to the first question what does she say to someone who would say that it only affects the person dabbling in it so why does it matter what does that mean the it only why does it matter if somebody's dabbling in witchcraft it only affects them because you don't know what that person is calling on on your behalf either you know like when I was in it I was uh definitely trying to cast spells on other people was I telling them that I was casting spells on them no yeah you know I don't know what damage I did then but also I was a terrible person to the people around me like I was I was horrible I was just angry and bitter and Confused yeah you know I wasn't a good person I was dealing with real darkness you know and that that definitely bled onto other people so that's just me Patrick says did Vespa experience any spiritual attack other than the intrusive thoughts during her conversion if so what kind did she notice a difference in spiritual attacks after being confirmed in the church I mean spiritual attacks now feel very external they feel like something coming at me rather than something that's inside you know and so I can you know raise the shield of faith and be like pew pew like not today thank you Kirsten says I always live in super old houses currently 180 years old house and often feel like there are spirits around but they don't feel Maleficent I actually feel comforted by them especially when I'm saying my rosary should I not be okay with this hmm you're on your own here oh boy I don't really I feel like uh you should talk to an exorcist about that yep good answer yeah and we've had a couple of interviews with Exorcist on the show so you can look them up too I live in a house that's 240 years old you win um I don't feel any presences there except the Lord Tim Paul probably not the temple Tim Poole says how old contemporary Orthodox Catholic art look sound feel wow such a complicated question I feel like I'd have to see that visually rather than informing the culture as in the medieval times and the Renaissance the church now has to resist a culture with artistic expression which seems like an exciting spot to be in and a call to answer but I have yet to find something that does that as well as it maybe should so I think what he's saying is like what should contemporary good Christian art look like okay this is something that I've been having conversations about for 30 years that often devolves into just like mush okay let's see and I it feels like an artificial separation for me um I don't make Christian art but all of the art that I make is informed by my Christian understanding of the world that includes human nature it includes psychology it includes mass movements of totalitarianism and how people act under duress and how people act when they're gripped with fear and how a society acts when they're gripped with fear right so like is that not Christian art of course not it's it's informed by by that understanding you know how of of how humans are right but also what is available to us in a Redemptive capacity does that make sense I think so yeah so um I I kind of want to show what it looks like when when one character heads toward toward a path of redemption and when one character heads toward destruction like there's nothing wrong with showing that we need to know those things right yeah as far as what kind of art comes into the church I'm not really a fan of churches like setting up art galleries okay and things like that I feel like the the church is a sacred space that's meant for art that is devotional and liturgical and meant to bring the people toward worship because that's what the place is for you know I'm not into like mixed um mixed-use buildings they feel yeah like if it's everything then it's nothing but would you be okay with it being a Christian art show off a church premises somewhere sure but what does that even mean Christian art show are we talking lions with flaming swords no and why don't you like that because that shouldn't exist yeah but why well because it's it's kitchen campy and and what makes something kitchen campy I'm not trying to drill you yeah I'm just because I'm with you but I don't know how to explain like you know when you see it yeah you know what I mean let me show you what I mean I I was in Africa Uganda preaching and I I realized that there was this noticeable lack of both sarcasm and cynicism and also um I mean this is my narrow experience you might say but it was mine and I think it was real also there was a lack there was no cheesy radar and I've often thought that maybe sarcasm cynicism and finding things cheesy somehow goes together huh um yeah and so I'm wondering yeah like what is it is it something in us that needs to be healed so that we no longer see it as or is it something embedded in the object that is by its very nature something that shouldn't exist you know I mean I think that a lot of the difficulties that we have with art are very modern problems because if you look you know before you know I don't know 1800 or something like that like most art was public like in the churches or it was um in the Palaces you know there was very little like Commercial Art you know like maybe when newspapers and pamphlets and tracts started to get published or something like you started to kind of blur the lines and get into more like popular art but that didn't really kind of exist before then like the art that people were encountering was not from something that was advertised to them like that's a very modern thing right yeah um the art that most people would encounter would be in church so now when you have um like the appeal to the individual and or to the demographic or whatever and you have all of these objects and then it just starts to get all confused and muddy you know so I I think that there's a movement among artists um back toward traditional ways of you know it's getting less abstract like people are like gravitating more toward figurative art you know more toward traditional stuff um that's less confusing and I don't know I'm value neutral on that you know my husband's an abstract expressionist painter okay right so and I and I love his work and I love a lot of modern painting but it's all kind of muddied up there with like the commercial stuff do you know what I mean yeah interesting so then does it have maybe more to do with the Avenue through which odd is being pushed like maybe that's the thing that's kind of poisoning this art more so than the art itself does that make sense like you talked about pamphlets and it being targeted to a demographic or an individual yeah is it that kind of process that's maybe just creating a lot of junk it's really hard to sort through this is a lot easier to make art today than it was with AI yeah well that's my mother yeah fair enough yeah I've been an interesting art question can I ask it yeah please okay what is your favorite artist sorry I know I can't see you but I'm looking at you on screen okay the computer screen's in the way um what's your favorite artist in each of the major mediums like painting sculpting drawing like in those like major mediums I'm like how how granular do you want to get about mediums you want to talk about watercolor oil acrylics whatever you want talk about the show is best when people talk about what they love and know about yeah okay well I'm gonna give a shout out to my favorite illustrator who's also my dear friend Felicia tasala you know that she is a great artist but Bert probably wasn't I don't know that bird ever did it yeah like just with the name like felici Felicita she's my friend in Rome but yeah um everybody should buy Felicia does books and she's also an Aussie so she live there still no she's in Rome yeah of course she is yeah do you have strong opinions on painters or like you said like um yeah I have I have favorite they're mostly illustrators I don't oh gosh I swear I saw her painting recently I'm not gonna remember it so I shouldn't have brought it up it just came out of my mouth often I find my experience is looking at art that other people tell me is amazing and I I'm jealous that they find it amazing but I can't seem to right I think that you just kind of like but there was this one there was a medieval painting that I saw that absolutely blew me away oh yeah I think people just like what they like and that's okay yeah where's that line like because a lot of us just haven't been cultured as it were or haven't been shown beautiful things so we get a taste for it's true and the artists can get very like snooty about it and kind of hide things away in a sort of Salon mindset like oh this isn't for the masses this isn't for the plebes like this is you know only for the intellectuals and I just that's garbage but which is I think why I like illustration so much because it is a very populist kind of you know approach to making art it's like you're trying to communicate a mess it's not just a message but like a text you know you're trying to make it um not just easy for people to understand but to like deepen their understanding of whatever it is they're reading who's your favorite author who's your favorite author uh dostoevsky's hard to beat um high in potak is who's that he wrote The Chosen and um uh my name is Asher Lev okay yeah Jewish American writer it's amazing hi I'm Paul talk who's that brilliant American author who just died he wrote the road and um Cormac McCarthy McCarthy no I have some books at home but Robbie's incredible yeah it's nice when you encounter Modern Art you're like oh this it's not like this isn't possible anymore yeah it's really hard to go from dostewsky to anything very much is yeah as I said I've been reading the brothers karamaso for 10 years like my first reading okay yeah I'm taking it real slow I'm I'm very much like a like I take a bite I chew on it for like a year you know and with him you can do that stinking Lisa better talk about the simpleton yeah it was so beautiful how the village loved her and clothe her there's nobody that um understands human psychology like Dostoevsky and I always read Brothers when I'm writing okay yeah always I don't read a lot of fiction when I'm writing because I don't want to get other people's voices in my head especially like any contemporary yeah I don't really love a lot of contemporary right how do you find your work satisfactory when you know it's not Dostoevsky like do you have a right and go this is just yeah of course and you you it's like you have to suppress the gag reflex of your own you know your own mediocrity and just kind of press forward and be like well it's I'm telling this story and so I have to trust that God gave me this idea for this time you know I'm about to embark on another book right now um that's I'm pretty excited about and this is after like I told myself back in the fall that I was done with writing I I actually quit after I came back from Rome I quit why it's really hard writing fiction is unbelievably hard it takes me two or three years to write a book um most most authors are not best sellers like 99 of us are not best sellers um because there's just a different set of parameters that Publishers are looking for to make bestsellers and they're the ones that are more you know popular sensibility or whatever and I'm dealing with like really hard stuff in my books you know Holocaust plague totalitarianism like burgeoning you know issues in our own culture and whatever and you know trying to tie those in historically and I don't shy away from stuff and I think that's not everybody's favorite flavor so what's your gauge on whether or not your book was actually good if it's not sales so what do you look to to go okay I think I I really trust my team um I'm at Knopf uh penguin random house and there are really literary house um or a really literary imprint within penguin Random House so I trust that if they want me to still keep writing books that um there there's something that they're seeing maybe that I'm not but I also just kind of feel like my grid is am I being true to this character am I or am I imposing something Planet talks about that about how we gotta shy away from making our characters our puppets to say our little absolutely and you can smell that a mile away oh my gosh and to be honest a lot of young adult fiction is like that it's like it breaks the fourth wall so badly and you just hear the author's agenda and it's not fun to read it's really sad it's really boring it reminds me of the cheesy Christian films yeah it's the same thing Laura it's no longer a story it's just a sermon it's just a sermon and it's or an allegory like a straight one-to-one allegory and you're like uh this is drudgery I can't get past like 15 pages in those books sorry like I'm a slow reader I'm a chewer so if I'm gonna devote my time to a book oh man it's got to be really good do you read your books to your husband as you're writing them or definitely yeah yeah he's like my number one editor and he'll tell me to cut this this is crap he can be like necessarily brutal and kind um you know he's he's definitely also my biggest cheerleader but I think because we're both artists you know we we know where we're coming from and like we want to help each other get better um so it's it's been a really harmonious match thank God I've had the experience a lot of like writing a short story and rewriting it and rewriting and spending so much time in it that it's like there's no flavor for me left in it I hate it so much but then I find out it's actually not as bad as I thought because it was just that I had spent so much time in it is that your experience or no yeah it's really hard to detach from the thing that you've created and not see all the flaws in it like with my illustrations I like as I'm working on them I'm like oh this is so life-giving I like I'm communing with the Lord as I'm painting it's like such a rich experience and then I get the book and I'm like oh shoot you know like I don't like how I drew that hand and you know all this composition's all wrong or like why'd I use that color you know so I just see the flaws but I just have to trust like if other people are having an emotional connection to it and they're getting something out of it I just have to release that you know what what do you think of the stereotype that all artists are Moody and melancholic is that you and your husband's experience or no I'm not no I'm really not emotionally driven I'm like very kind of facts and logic okay yeah yeah I think there are people like that um and for like I don't really deal with the Enneagram anymore but it kind of helped me to see like oh there are like among my art friends just different kinds of personalities oh really oh my gosh yeah and a lot of them are that yeah yeah and I'm double that um yeah skull cracker yeah yeah like just don't please don't waste my time uh I got work to do you know yeah because your husband is a filmmaker yeah again this is another experience where like people send me stuff all the time and I think you said to me like my husband did this little film and you're probably like bless his heart oh my God I'm sure it's great but like I'm gonna watch it because I don't know you I don't know him and then I started watching I'm like holy crap yeah he's really good yes yeah he's really good yeah um and uh we were talking about the sound of Freedom movie yeah what did you think of that we were supposed to go together last night but I was so happy and forgive me but I'm going to repeat it for our listeners yeah it was all sold out yeah like what about the next showing so loud on a Monday night yeah and then tonight sold out yeah unless you want to go to like 11 p.m showing like I want to go tonight but I'm pretty sure it's sold out yeah you're gonna have to like book it a week in advance or something yeah it was really it was really good we talked a lot about it this morning because um Ben does make a lot of films dealing with socks with sex trafficking that's it he thought it was really good yeah um he's he thought like you know we had a conversation about the filmmaking aspects of it and he felt like I have the same criticisms of it that I would have with any other film right but he's like an Insider he knows what he's looking at um but he felt like this is absolutely something that needs to be talked about and the the reception that it's getting the negative reception that it's getting is shameful why because people that are downplaying the trapping of trafficking of children as a problem are they downplaying it or are they or or attributing it to conspiracy theories or whatever it's like I'm sorry if you're dismissing it then you're part of the problem yeah if you're trying to sweep this under the rug like what's wrong with you because this is happening yeah if you don't know even if you have criticisms if you don't lead with a seriously sympathetic foot yes like if your first thing is just to pull it apart right as opposed to of course this is happening my God thank God someone's beginning to address it and yet I have these criticisms fine critique it on its merits it's the same thing with you know books or art of any kind it's like critique it on its merits don't make ad hominem attacks about the people who are creating it like what is the problem it's trying to address take it for that I want to see what the how's it doing I want to see how it's doing weren't they trying to get like 2 million let's see this came out 15 hours ago sound of Freedom earns 40 million at the box office an independent dramatic Thriller yada yada has made 40 million since the 4th of July right behind I Insidious the red door and Indiana Jones but it was above there I think on the I don't know if it was ever above it correct me if I'm wrong but I think the first day it brought in more okay than Indiana Jones is that relative to budget oh I see relative to budget and given the fact that it's not in nearly as well yeah you adjusted for the budget of the movie and the number of theaters showing it it like doubled Indiana Jones on that like those adjustments yeah not straight I think it was like four maybe almost I see the numbers in my head like as you can see the shape of the numbers I can't remember what the numbers actually are because I was looking at the chart the other day it made it I mean it's like 50 less maybe of Indiana Jones but if you adjusted for the budget of the movie and how many theaters India was in yeah um Angels like speak of a cringy name like Angel Studios I think of that I just think that's the sounds whatever it sounds on the two on the nose right however they're doing this stuff well look it says look at this his only son I haven't seen that I've seen the trailer for that came in fourth behind Dungeons and Dragons John Wick 4 and scream six at the box office in April I also really like their vid Angel project it's really cool are you familiar with that project no I I know the fellow who started with Angel we spoke at a conference together this was back before it was mainstream um but I didn't know that the two of them are collaborating I think bit Angel and Angel studios are are the same company oh um but vid Angel's a really cool thing it's basically it if if you have a streaming service you connect that streaming service to your vid Angel account and then you can tell vid Angel what you don't want to see and what you're watching and it'll skip those scenes for you that's interesting yeah I mean I'm gonna be honest like I deal with dark stuff in my books but there's stuff I can't tolerate dude like there's stuff that I've heard stories that I can't repeat even off camera they were so traumatizing yeah I mean the first the first 10 minutes of sound of Freedom like I was definitely triggered I was gonna ask you that yeah I did ask you that before the show had given your past yeah it was hard to take like I was sweating I you know and and I've done a lot of work you know what I mean I've had a lot of therapy like a lot of therapy um and a lot of healing from the Lord but it's hard in that therapy we mentioned earlier how on what do you say treated trauma kind of shows up in physical ailments later on like it comes back yeah what healing if any have you experienced through therapy physically mentally yeah well actually wait till my wife comes in right here hello Cameron hey you want to come in take a seat I just asked this question supernaturally and I am do you want my mic oh no it's I just that's okay that's not right I just wanted her to hear it thank you though um I was I was asking Vespa who experienced uh sexual abuse as a very young child about um well you say it better than me how trauma shows back up in bodily ailments and things he didn't expect and I wanted to ask you about your healing of that yeah so I mean I think it's been said so many times you know like the body keeps the score of that book um that childhood trauma can take up residence in the body and I think for me um it most definitely did I didn't unpack it till many many years later but um from the time I was about 15. um I developed a chronic pain disease and I had for 20 years you know I wanted to die sometimes it was just what wouldn't you say what is that what what was the how what were you diagnosed with I was ultimately diagnosed with fibromyalgia but it didn't seem to really like it's also catch-all it was at a time where fibromyalgia also wasn't very understood um but I still deal with some pain and I do have like other chronic ailments but um yeah the that pain disorder just like it had me um flat for for 20 years you know trying to like raise my babies you know at the time you know and trying to make work because you know part of it is the brain fog and you can't put two thoughts together and you're trying to like make work and it's you're just it feels like you're just rolling this boulder up the hill all the time all the time so um but I I was healed from that um I think partly supernaturally and partly it's kind of crazy okay so 10 years ago I had a car accident and um the nerve here is paralyzed so the only movement I have in my arm is like from the two other nerves back here um you lift your arm up you know to an extent I see yeah yeah um but I have all sorts of like ways of telescoping like you'd never know and I worked really hard so that you'd never know okay I didn't know yeah um but so I've worked with a disability for 10 years and in the beginning I couldn't hold my paintbrush I like I had no motor control in my fingers so I was in full-time rehab for two years um four days a week like full days of rehab Chiropractic Physical Therapy acupuncture massage anything I could do yeah and it healed the fibromyalgia What specifically all of it I think all of I think all the body work it um it rewired my brain I think is what happened um and there's some people who deal with fibromyalgia who and chronic fatigue and things like that because I think what we know about fibromyalgia is that it is a misfiring of the brain it's not fake pain it's not all in your head it's just that the brain is perceiving things as pain that aren't pain so I think with all of that body work it rewired me I don't know how else to say other than the Lord's healing um I'm very grateful that I don't deal with that anymore I feel like I would deal with the paralysis really fine I can deal with that but being in pain all the time is uh yeah it's a different kind of it's a cross it's a cross did you carry it with Grace do you think I hope so I mean I can grow in your ability to carry it I mean yeah I think because I I think because I met the Lord so personally and so intimately I always felt like he was with me in that um and you know we talked about the wound in Christ's side this is part of it the writing is also part of that so my first book was about the Holocaust and a lot of it was because I was trying to relearn a lot of my Jewish upbringing and answer questions that I had that we never talked about and things about Jewish history and um but anybody who's written about the Holocaust will tell you that it changes you utterly forever um the things that you have to put yourself through and look at and digest especially if you're trying to translate that for young readers who are others people's children and you don't want to traumatize them with the things that you have then traumatized yourself with but I always felt like the Lord um equipped me to be able to do that work because I had endured on the front end of life you know had sort of paid on the front end of life with that trauma so I felt like he was with me in that he'll be with me in this and at a certain point um he showed me um another vision and it was of uh we were we were going down a a dark hallway way way way underground like in a bunker you know it was this narrow dark hallway and in the walls were all these little doors with keys and we turned to this one door and he put a key in my hand and just a little door and I unlocked it and inside was his sorrow and he gave me that so that's where I live um did you ever go to therapy other than rehab many many years of therapy was that also helpful in trauma recovery incredibly helpful you had a Christian therapist um thank God yeah who really kind of helped me see where the Lord was in all of the trauma um and he was there and that's a hard thing to accept especially when you're talking about child sexual abuse like how how could the Lord just sit idly by and let it happen right um and I don't know you know like that's not up to me to know um just like when I visited Auschwitz like I was like where are you you know where were you in this and his answer to me was it was everywhere what does that mean I put my hand over my mouth I can't answer that question what it means I just know that it is you know I'm sure we have people watching who have experienced similar sexual abuse and other forms of abuse who wonder whether it's okay to be angry at God yeah um because anger is honest I think there's a difference between anger and rage too yeah you know I had rage for a long long time I still have anger I think I'm I think I'm somebody who is sort of naturally angry and I think that if it's wake up that way you know damn it it's too early when you say like there was no cynicism or sarcasm in that I'm like hide myself away but um no but I think that the Lord like if if he hadn't hijacked me okay which was very much what happened he came I was in a pit I was in the abyss he literally came and yanked me out of it hijacked me totally if he hadn't done that I often think like oh at the time when that happened like was I this great sinner you know like I wasn't on drugs I wasn't sleeping around you know yeah I was into some spiritual stuff like you know but like was I this great sinner or whatever the answer is yes but um but what did he save me from and the answer is my anger like I think now about who I would be if he hadn't and I would just be the bitterest most degraded shell of a person and I think what he did was he took that fundamental aspect of my personality that anger and he channeled it into being angry at the right things you know like I will not sweep the abuse under the rug I will not sweep the people that hurt me under the rug like that's very real and I'm not going to apologize for them or make excuses or you know what I mean but I can acknowledge that without casting that at the Lord's feet you know I heard you know John Eldridge is yeah love him I was I woke up with Stacy Eldridge on my mind this morning so it's interesting tell me he gave a talk in which he led men through a prayer experience and invited them to forgive God yeah and he immediately anticipated the interior kind of rejection those of us who have had any theology training yeah would have and said you just need to trust me because you you cannot you cannot trust who you haven't forgiven and so in one sense god is perfect and all spotless but I thought there was tremendous wisdom in that and I I wondered if that would be good advice for those who've experienced abuse yeah I think that's not necessarily my experience of needing I didn't really need to do that I think I needed to trust God's goodness that he really was for me and that I belonged to him and was safe with him that was the Avenue yeah yeah so that I could know who to direct my anger at um interestingly the the people who uh who did these things to me are are dead um the world feels a lot lighter without them in it I hate to say that yeah um but you know you can direct your Your Righteous anger at the people who do evil like that's we should like you know we should know where to direct that but at the same time like we have to we have to release them to God's justice you know because he's in the business of perfect Justice like he's able to give the the victim perfect mercy and the perpetrator perfect justice but it also at the same time makes me tremble for those people you know my father who I never met is dead my God you know like I don't want to think of my father having to stand before the Lord and give account for what he did um but I also have to just release him to the Lord I can't how do you do that muscle memory yeah you know [Music] obviously done be done did what did you just drop microphone microphone damn it why were you even taking it off were you trying to give it to her or oh did you want to talk I just didn't want to talk you can come here and talk if you wanna so no because I hear you hear people talking about forgiveness being a choice and I just I think a fair question is what does that even mean and I wondered it's probably similar to releasing someone yeah but I wondered what that means too I read something years ago I don't remember what it what it was called or who wrote it but um I'm just sorry I gotta get this out I'm laughing because after that gigantic crash I just look at Thursday and it's like that doesn't sound like everything's fine everything set it down and reached over to mute it and that's how you get to it as it hit the floor I just heard in my headphones the monster like so I know everyone is just like as I told you when I was at Daily wire and Candace was doing her little one-person thing I walked into the dark room there was at least 15 people working on her show so you don't do that many of these jobs you're crushing it you don't feel bad yeah oh my gosh yes sorry about that I apologize to the audience and to the audio listeners I'm gonna cut that out of the audio I'm gonna have to it'll be easy to find too yeah it's just straight up forgiveness and um yeah so it was about sewing and reaping and it was about like if you sow unforgiveness like when when you hold people to uh when you don't release them to forgiveness right you you wind up reaping anger and reaping bitterness yourself right it's a little bit of a variation on the like um forgiveness benefits you more than the other person kind of but I don't I feel like there is something more going on spiritually in the in the sort of relationship between that person and God and you it's like I I don't know any other way to say it but but to release them to his Justice you know like the the woman who hit me in this car accident yeah yeah I had to pray that for two years while I was waiting to get Justice in that regard because she took something from me you know she took my full function of my working arm as an artist you know and I just had to choose like I am not going to give myself over to bitterness or offense with us I'm I'm gonna forgive her and I'm gonna release her to let God deal with her you know and I I don't Harper bitterness toward her you know it's now and now I can see all of all of this stuff as just part of my story and if I can recognize that and put it into my work then I have more understanding of of human nature of the psychology of the characters I'm writing you know what I mean like I'm not I'm not really willing to write anybody off um not willing to draw hard lines and say well like I will I'll only deal with these kinds of people that are like me or I don't know I want to have relationships with all different kinds of people even if I don't agree with them or I find their views reprehensible or I want to understand like you know how did this person become who they are I wanted I want to close in a prayer but um I wanted to ask you if there's anything else you wanted to touch on before we begin to wrap up like we could talk forever so we probably shouldn't probably good too yeah is there any place you want to point people we have links in your to your Instagram to your books to your illustrations below um I think I gave you those links um but yeah I think um I always love hearing from readers you know about how the books are kind of intersecting with them and um with their own stories so hopefully you know people will read them so keep going before you do that um I think what I really want to tie things together with is just um how good the Lord is okay how loving how sweet how kind it's been so unbelievably kind to me I don't deserve it at all not for a minute and he just keeps meeting with me with his kindness again and again and again and again and I I don't get it you know but he he just keeps showing up and I get the the sense all the time that he is just putting his arm around me saying let's go let's go on another adventure let's do something else you know he's he's that's available for for all of us so I wanted to pray this prayer with you and I thought what we could do is take it paragraph by paragraph yeah and I want to invite people to pray along with us this was written by John Eldridge so I printed it off this morning so we could pray it I just felt like the Lord wanted this oh I'm sorry I'm gonna interrupt you again because I said Stacy Eldridge yeah and this kind of plays into what I was getting at her book captivating opened up for me before I became a writer um the the image of God living in every person it changed the way that I see people and when when I see people of all kinds even if I don't like them there's something of that spark of the of the Divine image that I'm I can see now um and that came from her book like I feel like people are just like on fire with Glory all the time so take that for away mom yeah praise God eldritch's all right you feel up for this I didn't ask you beforehand that's that's cool all right in the name of the father and the son of the Holy Spirit I'm in my dear Lord Jesus I come to you now to be restored in you renewed in you to receive your life and your love and all the grace and mercy I so desperately need this day I honor you as my Lord and I Surrender every aspect and dimension of my life to you I give you my spirit soul and body my heart mind and will I cover myself with your blood my spirit soul and body my heart mind and will I ask your Holy Spirit to restore me in you renew me in you and Lead this time of prayer in all that I now pray I stand in total agreement with your spirit and with all those praying for me by the spirit of God and by the spirit of God Alone dearest God holy and Victorious Trinity you alone are worthy of all My Worship my heart's devotion all my praise all my trust and all the glory of my life I love you I worship you I give myself over to you in my heart's search for life you alone are life and you have become my life I renounce all other gods every Idol and I give to you God the place in my heart and in my life that you truly deserve this is all about you and not about me you are the hero of this story and I belong to you I ask your forgiveness for my every sin search me know me and reveal to me where you are working in my life and Grant to me the grace of your healing and deliverance and a deep and true repentance heavenly father thank you for loving me and choosing me before you made the world you are my true father my Creator Redeemer sustainer and the true end of all things including my life I love you I trust you I worship you I give myself over to you father to be one with you as Jesus is one with you thank you for proving your love for me by sending Jesus I receive him and all his life and all his work which you ordained for me thank you for including me in Christ forgiving me my sins granting me his righteousness making me complete in him thank you for making me alive with Christ raising me with him seating me with him at your right hand establishing me in his authority and anointing me with your love and your spirit and your favor I receive it all with thanks and give it total claim to my life my spirit soul and body my heart mind and will Jesus thank you for coming to Ransom me with your own life I love you worship you trust you I give myself an over to you to be one with you in all things I receive all the work and Triumph of your cross death blood and sacrifice for me through which my every sin is atoned for I am ransomed delivered from the kingdom of darkness and transferred to your kingdom my sin nature is removed my heart circumcised unto God and every claim being made against me is canceled and disarmed amen I take my place now in your cross and death dying with you to sin to my flesh to this world to the evil one and his kingdom I take up the cross and Crucify My Flesh with all its Pride arrogance unbelief and idolatry and cowardice I'll add that I put off the old man apply to me all the work and Triumph in your cross death blood and sacrifice I receive it with thanks and give it total claim to my spirit soul and body my heart mind and will Jesus I also receive you as my life and I receive all the work and Triumph in your Resurrection through which you have conquered sin death judgment and the evil one death has no power over you nor does any foul thing and I have been raised with you to a New Life to Live Your Life dead to sin and alive to God take my place now in your resurrection and in your life and I give my life to you to live your life I am saved by your life I reign in life through your life I receive your hope love Faith Joy your goodness trueness wisdom power and strength apply to me all the work and Triumph in your Resurrection I receive it with thanks and I give it total claim to my spirit soul and body my heart mind and will Jesus I also severely sincerely I severely too receive you as my authority Rule and Dominion my Everlasting Victory against Satan and his kingdom and my ability to bring your kingdom at all times and in every way I receive all the work and Triumph in your Ascension through which Satan has been judged and cast down and all authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to you all authority in the heavens and on this Earth has been given to you Jesus and you are worthy to receive all glory and honor power and Dominion now and forever I take my place now in your Authority and in your throne through which I have been raised with you to the right hand of the father and established in your Authority I give myself to you to reign with you always apply to me all the work and Triumph in your Authority and your throne I receive it with thanks and I give it total claim to my spirit soul and body my heart mind and will and I now bring the authority Rule and Dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ and the full work of Christ over my life today over my home my household my work over all my kingdom and domain I bring the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ and the full work of Christ against every evil power coming against me against every foul Spirit every foul power and device cut them off in the name of the Lord I bind and banish them from me and from my kingdom now in the mighty name of Jesus Christ I also bring the full work of Christ between me and every person and I allow only the love of God and only the spirit of God between us holy spirit thank you for coming I love you I worship you I trust you I receive all the work and Triumph in Pentecost through which you have come you have clothed me with power from on high sealed me in Christ become my union with the father and the son the spirit of Truth in me the life of God in Me my counselor comforter strength and guide I honor you as Lord and I fully give to you every aspect and dimension of my spirit soul and body my heart mind and will to be filled with you to walk in step with you in all things fill me a fresh Holy Spirit restore my union with the father and the son lead me into all truth anoint me for all of my life and walk and calling and Lead me deeper into Jesus today I receive you now with thanks and I give you total claim to my life heavenly father thank you for granting to me every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus I claim the riches in Christ Jesus over my life today I bring the blood of Christ once more over my spirit soul and body over my heart mind and will I put on the full armor of God the belt of Truth breastplate of righteousness shoes of the Gospel helmet of salvation I take up the shield of faith and sword of the spirit and I choose to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of your might to pray at all times in the spirit Jesus thank you for your angels I summon them in the name of Jesus Christ and instruct them to destroy all that is raised against me to establish your kingdom over me to guard me day and night I ask you to send forth your spirit to raise up prayer and intercession for me I now call forth the kingdom of God throughout my home my household my kingdom and domain and this studio in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ giving all glory and honor and thanks to him in Jesus name amen thanks

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 353,664

Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy

Id: Yg99gQ4P-Ys

Length: 142min 43sec (8563 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 11 2023